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Which tuner to get and getting the most from it. Thank God, for the radio!

Who Cares? HD Radio Sounds Like Shite! [Was: Re: new HD tuner - pretty soon now...]

Not to rain on your parade, but so what?

HD Radio uses a lossy codec with a maximum bit rate of about 96Kbps and this bit rate gets cut in HALF each time they add an additional channel (in theory, they can do up to 6 channels, I believe), so you are already starting out with a lossy, sounds-like-shite low bit-rate signal and reducing its already terrible fidelity each time a new HD sub-carrier is added by the station.

In the greater scheme of things, HD Radio is several years too late to the party - Many Internet radio stations broadcast a higher bit rate signal and WiFi radio will make and satellite radio has already made HD Radio obsolete.

The only people who really care about HD Radio are the Ibiquity employees who will lose their jobs when HD Radio finally crashes and burns and the Infinity's/Clear Channels/etc. who were suckered into spending big bucks on IBOC broadcasting systems that are now broadcasting to a market with almost no radios available for people to listen to HD Radio on.

Hell, even most station engineers at stations broadcasting HD Radio will tell you they DO NOT EVEN HAVE AN HD RADIO MONITOR to listen to their own signal on. So what does that tell you?


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  • Who Cares? HD Radio Sounds Like Shite! [Was: Re: new HD tuner - pretty soon now...] - Vinyl Rules! 11:51:13 11/08/06 (0)


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